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Director, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Pleasanton, California, United States

About IonQ: 

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world’s leading quantum company delivering solutions to solve the world’s most complex problems. IonQ’s newest generation quantum computers, IonQ Tempo and IonQ Forte Enterprise, are the latest in cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners such as Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve 20x performance results. The company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance in 2025.

The company is accelerating its technology roadmap and intends to deliver the world’s most powerful quantum computers with 2 million qubits by 2030 to accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. IonQ’s advancements in quantum networking position the company as a leader in building the quantum internet.

 

Location: This role is based onsite at our office in Pleasanton, CA.
Travel: Up to 20%
Job ID:  1457

The Role: 

We are looking for a Director of SRE. As a Director of SRE, you'll be part of a cross-functional team whose mission is to lead IonQ on its journey to build the world's best quantum computers to solve the world's most complex problems. 

In this role, you will build and lead SRE/DevOps organizations operating multi-tenant SaaS at scale on AWS, Azure, and GCP. You will be responsible for production ownership of availability, latency, incident response, and capacity management while implementing an SRE operating model using SLOs/SLIs and error budgets. Your leadership will bridge the gap between cloud infrastructure architecture and AI-ready operations to ensure a secure-by-default platform for our product teams.

Responsibilities:

  • Build and lead SRE/DevOps organizations operating multi-tenant SaaS at scale on AWS/Azure/GCP, including production ownership for availability, latency, incident response, DR, and capacity management.
  • Architect cloud infrastructure focusing on networking (VPC/VNet, routing, private connectivity), compute, containers/orchestration, and data platforms.
  • Implement SRE operating models using SLOs/SLIs and error budgets to balance reliability and delivery velocity.
  • Drive CI/CD and release engineering leadership, ensuring safe progressive delivery (canary/blue-green), automated rollbacks, and measurable deployment health.
  • Scale Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and platform automation through "golden pipelines," standardized modules, and secure-by-default guardrails.
  • Lead cross-functional execution across Product, Engineering, Security, Support, and Customer Success while setting clear ownership boundaries.
  • Own organizational planning, including hiring, team topology, on-call models, budget, and vendor strategy.
  • Establish a culture of operational excellence through blameless postmortems, corrective-action tracking, and toil reduction.


Requirements:

  • At least 15 years of experience building and leading SRE/DevOps organizations operating multi-tenant SaaS at scale on AWS, Azure, or GCP. 
  • Deep technical knowledge of cloud infrastructure architecture, networking, containers, and secure-by-default platform guardrails. 
  • Proven ability to run production for global enterprise/federal customer bases, including tenant isolation and data residency considerations.

Preferred Qualifications: 

  • AI-ready operations experience for networking SaaS, including streaming telemetry pipelines and closed-loop automation. 
  • Experience with Juniper Mist AI or similar large-scale networking SaaS platforms is strongly preferred. 
  • Knowledge of AI-native networking concepts such as service-level expectations (SLEs) and proactive anomaly detection. 
  • Security and resilience mindset aligned to Zero Trust designs and continuous telemetry policy enforcement. 
  • Hands-on experience operating SaaS products for networking/security domains where customer impact is tied to network behavior. 
  • Executive communication strength, with the ability to present SLO posture, incident learnings, and risk to leadership.


The approximate base salary range for this position is $192,979 - $252,659. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

Compensation will vary based on individual factors such as education, qualifications, and experience of the final candidate(s), specific office location, and calibration against relevant market data and internal team equity.  Posted base salary figures are subject to change as new market data becomes available. Our benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, matching 401K, unlimited PTO and paid holidays, parental/adoption leave, legal insurance, and a home technology stipend.  Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided when a candidate receives an offer of employment. 


IonQ's HQ is located in College Park, Maryland, just outside of Washington DC. We are actively building out our recently opened manufacturing and production facility in Bothell, WA (near Seattle). Depending on the position, you may be required to be near one of our offices in College Park, Seattle, Toronto, Canada, and Basel, Switzerland. However, IonQ will expand into additional domestic and international geographies, so don’t let this stop you from applying!
 
At IonQ, we believe in fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all while striving to identify and eliminate barriers. We empower employees to thrive by fostering a culture of autonomy, productivity, and respect. We are dedicated to creating an environment where individuals can feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.
 
We are committed to equity and justice. We welcome different voices and viewpoints and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

US Technical Jobs. The position you are applying for will require access to technology that is subject to U.S. export control and government contract restrictions.  Employment with IonQ is contingent on either verifying “U.S. Person” (e.g., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum) status for export controls and government contracts work, obtaining any necessary license, and/or confirming the availability of a license exception under U.S. export controls.  Please note that in the absence of confirming you are a U.S. Person for export control and government contracts work purposes, IonQ may choose not to apply for a license or decline to use a license exception (if available) for you to access export-controlled technology that may require authorization, and similarly, you may not qualify for government contracts work that requires U.S. Persons, and IonQ may decline to proceed with your application on those bases alone.  Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.  

US Non-Technical Jobs. Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.

If you are interested in being a part of our team and mission, we encourage you to apply!


 

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